2.08.2007

Excellence in wingnut science!

You don’t hear much about the ozone hole any more. Has it gone away? Nope. NOAA and NASA say in 2006 it was bigger and deeper than ever.

But wait, you say, we implemented the Montreal Protocols in 1989, eliminating ozone depleting CFCs. Kofi Annan called the Protocol, “Perhaps the most successful international agreement to date.” CFC concentrations have been falling since 1995. How can the ozone hole be worse?

It’s not worse, says NOAA, it’s better. It’s just that you can’t see how great the Protocol is working because colder than average temperatures in the Antarctic mask the benefit. Cold weather “result[s] in larger and deeper ozone holes, while warmer weather leads to smaller ones.”

Although increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere may result in warmer surface temperatures, colder temperatures are expected to occur in the stratosphere. In fact, temperatures in the lower stratosphere, as measured by NOAA's Microwave Sounding Unit, have cooled during the past 22-years, the length of the satellite record. Colder stratospheric temperatures can enhance ozone loss through their affect on the formation of polar stratospheric clouds which in turn promote chlorine-caused ozone destruction.